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The Beaker Bell Phenomenon

I originally wanted to post this in Linguistics, but I realized that this is a topic that straddles both linguistics and genetics, so I decided to post it here. The Beaker-Bell Culture is one of the most puzzling archaeological cultures, and it has been frquently discussed on the forum as s carrier for bringing both R1b and the Indo-European languages into Western Europe. As a short summary:

I am going to think about this a bit more before I vote in the poll. My thoughts about Beaker Culture have mostly been with respect to Britain... like, it's fairly clear that Grooved Ware (pre-Beaker) culture in Britain was not contiguous with Continental Europe, while Beaker Culture clearly was. That cements in my mind Grooved Ware as being non-R1b as well as non-IE... it probably had a lot of I2a-Isles or similar. Similarly, it seems clear to me that Iron Age migrations are the most likely spreaders of R1b-U152, and likely also P-Celtic. In-between we don't have much evidence of outside influence into Britain other than Beaker Culture, so that seems to pin the spread of proto-Celtic and R1b-L21 (at least the initial R1b-L21) on the Beaker People. On the other hand, the situation seems far from being so obvious on the Continent.

My best guess right now is that Beaker culture was originally an indigenous, largely Haplogroups I & G-based phenomenon that nonetheless ended up running into R1a-dominant Corded Ware Culture and spreading its advancing Southern cousin, R1b, due to migrations within it. I'm not sure how I would put that into the poll, maybe all of the first four. I'm far from confident on this.

The Bell Beaker phenomenon has been the biggest question mark in my timeline of the spread of the Indo-European languages and R1b1b2a in Western Europe.

- The extend of the Bell Beaker matches the map of R1b-L11 with uncanny precision. Yet, the Bell Beaker culture spread exactly the wrong way round, from Southwest Europe towards the east and north. R1b1b2a and the Indo-European speakers should have advanced in the opposite direction.

- The Beaker culture started in the late Neolithic and ends during the Bronze Age, which is the period associated with the IE migrations. Its continuity with the Megalithic culture, so far proven to be associated with I2 and G2a people, but not R1a or R1b people, makes me believe that it was indeed not Indo-European.

Here is the scenario I envisage. The beaker cultures (Bell Beaker or Funnelbeaker) were obviously non-IE and non-R1b1b2a. At least at the beginning. I just happened that the Proto-Italo-Celts started moving from the Danube region to Western Europe in the middle of the Bell Beaker culture, and overran it completely in the ensuing centuries, killing or enslaving countless indigenous men, but keeping most of the female population. A new hybrid culture was born, which explains why the beaker phenomenon survived for a while, before being definitely replaced by a purer Indo-European culture like the Tumulus and Hallstatt culture (perhaps through a later migration). In fact, it would make sense that the very first wave of Proto-Celts invaded Iberia, bringing S116* lineages with them, then a second wave (L21) took over France, Britain and Ireland, and a last wave brought S28/U152 to central Europe and a purer steppe-like kurgan/tumulus heritage. The Urnfield culture is another abnormality, since most Bronze-age Indo-European cultures buried their dead (in tumulus, for important people), but Urnfield people cremated them (or perhaps was it indigenous women cremating their dead husbands and sons, killed by the new invaders, as creepy as this sounds).

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"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?", Winston Churchill.

Thank you everybody for your replies. First off, I agree that the Beaker Bell Culture (or 'phenomenon', if you will) represents indeed one of the greatest puzzles we're still facing. This was more or less the reason I started this thread.

I also agree that one of the most bizarre issue is really that the spread of R1b-L11 sort of looks inverse to that of Beaker-Bell, especially if you consider that U106 (in Central Europe) was the first to branch off.

The main argument for me to assume Beaker-Bell was (at least originally) not Indo-European is really a linguistic one. As mentioned, the Basque language possesses it's own native words for metals and metal-working:

This would be totally unexpected if Beaker-Bell had been Indo-European. In contrast, the Finnic languages clearly make borrowings from early IE. So, for me this provoked the idea that there might have been a native Western European culture which practiced metal-working, and Beaker-Bell is the only candidate for this. Since Basque is an isolate language nowadays, it's obviously impossible to test if these words were native to Basque or borrowed, but they are clearly non-IE in origin.

One major genetics-related question that I wonder on is, if it wasn't R1b, was there another Haplogroup associated with the spread of Beaker-Bell? Another thought that occured to me is that as can be seen clearly from the map, there was a large area of overlap between Beaker-Bell and Corded Ware, and it begs the question what language situation we faced in the overlap area.

Otherwise, I also agree with Sparkey that the pattern of U152 - at least in Atlantic Europe is probably the result of iron age migrations (though I will put a question mark here on the situation Italy). I otherwise speculated already that L21 is associated with the Atlantic Bronze Age, at least the properly Celtic part of the Atlantic Bronze Age (it's pretty obvious that the late Atlantic Bronze Age wasn't a homogenous area).

Regarding Urnfield, that is another can of worms I'm going to open in detail at some other day...

Originally Posted by spongetaro

There is a thesis of Arnaud Etchamendy who suggests that basque can be an Indo-European language

Well, apart from the fact that that's a minority view, even if we hypothetically assume for a moment that there is a way how Basque could be Indo-European and ignore all the obstacles (Basque is ergative-absolutive and agglutinative, whereas Indo-European is nominative-accusative and fusional, and I didn't even get started on sound correspondences!), there's basic obstacle that the core vocabulary of Basque is fundamentally non-Indo-European, and all cognates between Basque and Indo-European are loanwords (Romance, Latin or Celtic).

In fact, it would make sense that the very first wave of Proto-Celts invaded Iberia, bringing S116* lineages with them, then a second wave (L21) took over France, Britain and Ireland, and a last wave brought S28/U152 to central Europe and a purer steppe-like kurgan/tumulus heritage.

According to your R1b tree is S28/U152 a descendant of Italo-Celtic S116. S116 is 5300 years old while S28 is for about 3500 years old right?

The ancestor of (Germanic ?) L21/U106 is NOT from S116 (Italo-Celtic ?), but is the descendant of the more archaic L11/S127. L11 is 6000 old and thus older than S116.

S28/U152 is from Iberia. And I don't think that (Germanic ?) L21/U106 is from Iberia at all! But maybe somewhere from Central Europe or something.

Alright, this is indeed an extremely hard question. But it is also one that has an enormous impact in reconstructing the ethnic movements of Europe. So first off I would begin with this reasoning: I assume, like many here do, that R1b-L11 came to Europe with the Indo-European migrations. I also assume, like is the mainstream archaeological opinion, that the (proto-)Indo-Europeans arrived to Western, Central, and Southeast Europe from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age, and I believe most will also agree with me on this. The problem, of course, is how and (exactly) when did the Indo-European languages reach these parts of Europe.
Now, let us get to the problems in question: Was the Bell Beaker culture Indo-European (and if so, what variety?)? Did L11 (or at least S116) originate or at least expand to Western and Central Europe with them? I will try to answer the first question, as the second question is (in the opinion of most) answered by it.
First of all, those who argue for an Indo-European identity for the Beaker folk point to something that is indeed considered diagnostic in many cases for establishing whether an archaeological horizon can be considered Indo-European: the domestication of the horse. Anthony and Brown (2003:66) indeed state that:

This gradual expansion in the social and economic roles of horseback riding culminated in the first widespread adoption of riding beyond the western steppes, first in the steppes of Central Eurasia (Botai/Tersek, about 3500–3000 BC), and later in eastern Europe (Baden- Kostolac/Corded Ware/Bell Beaker, beginning about 3000–2500 BC)

Eneolithic horse rituals and riding in the steppes: new evidence, in Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse
That is, there was indeed horse-riding in the Beaker culture. However, it is also true that (Milisaukas and Kruk 2011):

...the frequencies of horse remains are low in central and western Europe prior to the Bronze Age.

Middle Neolithic/Early Copper Age, Continuity, Diversity, and Greater Complexity, 5500/5000–3500 BC, in Prehistoric Europe
That is, horse-riding (with all its sociocultural components) only became widespread after the Beaker culture.
One of the most persistent problems with the theory that the Beaker culture was Indo-European was its origins in Iberia and its northwest-southeast expansion (ibid; see map):

. In the past, the Iberian Peninsula was favored as its area of origin. Chronology tends to support this hypothesis, since the earliest radiocarbon dates around 2800 BC occur in Iberia, southern France, and northern Italy. Chronological data also indicates that the Bell Beaker phenomenon spread from the southwest toward the northeast. Today some archaeologists tend to prefer local origins for the Bell Beaker phenomenon. However, the Bell Beaker burials around Stonehenge in England indicate some migration. “On the basis of isotope testing of the man’s teeth” from a burial at Amesbury, “archaeologists concluded that he had spent his youth in the Alpine regions, while his son, buried nearby, was a native Briton” (Czebreszuk 2004:483).

Beaker Map.JPG
I, for the archaeological evidence I have pondered, believe it is indeed a culture with local origins (at least in Iberia). However it is undeniable that there was, in one way or another, a migration associated with the Beaker folk. I would (tentatively, very tentatively) associate it perhaps with the expansion of some subclades of haplogroup J2, E1b1b and/or G2 into Central and Western Europe from Iberia:
I thus believe that the most probable scenario is a later spread of Indo-European languages (and R1b) to Western Europe during the Bronze Age.

One major genetics-related question that I wonder on is, if it wasn't R1b, was there another Haplogroup associated with the spread of Beaker-Bell? Another thought that occured to me is that as can be seen clearly from the map, there was a large area of overlap between Beaker-Bell and Corded Ware, and it begs the question what language situation we faced in the overlap area.

I don't know why I haven't thought about this earlier, but what if the Bell Beaker culture was the one that spread haplogroup E1b1b (along perhaps with J2 and of course with some G2a, I2a that was already all over Europe at the time) around Western Europe ? It may sound crazy at first, but the Bell Beaker started from central Portugal, one of the earliest region where the Neolithic started in Western Europe. As we still don't have timing for the spread of E1b1b, that could be it.

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"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?", Winston Churchill.

According to your R1b tree is S28/U152 a descendant of Italo-Celtic S116. S116 is 5300 years old while S28 is for about 3500 years old right?

I didn't calculate the age of haplogroups. This was done by people at ISOGG and other specialists. Usually they tend to underestimate the age because many side lineages died out or weren't tested for STR yet, so they cannot get the full picture.

The ancestor of (Germanic ?) L21/U106 is NOT from S116 (Italo-Celtic ?), but is the descendant of the more archaic L11/S127. L11 is 6000 old and thus older than S116.

You have to understand that L11, S116 and S21/U106 probably all existed in small numbers back in the Pontic Steppe before R1b moved to central and western Europe.

S28/U152 is from Iberia. And I don't think that (Germanic ?) L21/U106 is from Iberia at all! But maybe somewhere from Central Europe or something.

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"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?", Winston Churchill.

Eneolithic horse rituals and riding in the steppes: new evidence, in Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse
That is, there was indeed horse-riding in the Beaker culture. However, it is also true that (Milisaukas and Kruk 2011):

Horse-riding could have spread to western Europe through the contact of Bell Beaker people with Corded Ware (R1a) and Danubian R1b cultures. After all, the Amerindians of North America learned from seeing Europeans riding horses. Once a few horses are captured and the skill learned, the practice can spread like bushfire.

Another possibility is that, as I explained above, the horses appeared in the Bell Beaker culture along with the Indo-European advance from the east. What we need to know is whether the Bell Beaker folks already had horses before this culture expanded out of Iberia (before 2500 BCE). I would expect that they didn't.

Try to see the Bell Beaker period in two phases :

1) expansion from Portugal to Iberia then to all Western Europe (2900 to 2400 BCE).
2) progressive Indo-European invasion of the Bell Beaker culture from central Europe (from circa 2500 BCE until the complete disappearance of the Bell Beaker circa 1800 BCE).

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"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?", Winston Churchill.

I don't know why I haven't thought about this earlier, but what if the Bell Beaker culture was the one that spread haplogroup E1b1b (along perhaps with J2 and of course with some G2a, I2a that was already all over Europe at the time) around Western Europe ? It may sound crazy at first, but the Bell Beaker started from central Portugal, one of the earliest region where the Neolithic started in Western Europe. As we still don't have timing for the spread of E1b1b, that could be it.

Hmmm, there is that possibility. Given we (still) have no idea as of yet where E1b came from (it's one of those Haplogroups everybody expected to be Neolithic but it clearly isn't), this might be it. There's otherwise the possibility, as Sparkey suggested, that this was a Neolithic phenomenon and the Beaker-Bell people were predominantly G2 and I, but as Asturrulumbo pointed out, there definitely was migration associated with Beaker-Bell. There is also the issue that we do not know what the Neolithic situation in Iberia looked like: it's conceivable that E1b was already in Iberia during the Neolithic, but not in France or Germany. Of course, one issue that I wonder is: if E1b was spread by the Beaker-Bell people, why is it so rare nowadays in the British Isles?

Try to see the Bell Beaker period in two phases :

1) expansion from Portugal to Iberia then to all Western Europe (2900 to 2400 BCE).
2) progressive Indo-European invasion of the Bell Beaker culture from central Europe (from circa 2500 BCE until the complete disappearance of the Bell Beaker circa 1800 BCE).

So, you're suggesting that Beaker-Bell was essentially 'hijacked' by Indo-Europeans upon the contact with the Corded Ware area in Central Europe?

I don't agree with you. Do you have evidence for it? S28/U152 is a descendant of S116. When S28 evolved from S116, S116 was already well established in Iberia!

So I believe that S28/U152 is from Iberia.

But it's possible that it's precursor S116 originally is from somewhere else.

The highest abundance of S28 is in northern italy, and after that Switzerland and southwestern Germany. In contrast, it's below 5% in Iberia. In addition to that, the highest diversity of S28 is apparently in northern Germany.

Nein, S21/U106 has nothing to do with S116. S21/U106 is a descendant of L11/S127.

Well, U106 has a whole lot to do with S116, because it's the outgroup. L11 is dominated by two subclades, S116 and U106.

It's possible that L11/S127 and S116 are from the same source (area), but S116 migrated into Iberia, while L11/S127 stayed in Central Europe and mixed with Indo-Europeans (R1a & J2 folks).

There is no reason to assume that S116 migrated into Iberia first and that it's subclades then migrated from Britain, Central Europe and Italy from Iberia. Otherwise we would find higher concentrations of U152 or L21 in Iberia, which we don't.

I cannot open the first article, but I am aware of the second article, and it is from January 2010 (which is why I asked "as of the end of 2010), and the Neolithic origin of R1b essentially outdated/disproven due to the absence of R1b in Neolithic sites.

There is no reason to assume that S116 migrated into Iberia first and that it's subclades then migrated from Britain, Central Europe and Italy from Iberia. Otherwise we would find higher concentrations of U152 or L21 in Iberia, which we don't.

I cannot open the first article, but I am aware of the second article, and it is from January 2010 (which is why I asked "as of the end of 2010), and the Neolithic origin of R1b essentially outdated/disproven due to the absence of R1b in Neolithic sites.

- That's my point the Beaker-Bell Culture spread all subclades of S116 from Iberia in other parts of Europe. Your 'higher concentrations of U152 or L21 in Iberia' is not a strong argument. R1b in West Asia is older than R1b in Europe and still there's much more R1b in Europe than West Asia. The same case is with S116 and it subclades. Ancient subclades of S116 evolved even further in new land into S145/L21, S28/U152 etc.

Re: the E1b hypothesis: We need to remember that we're talking about two different European E1b clades, E1b-M81 (probably came over from North Africa) and E1b-M78 (probably came over from the Near East). Now we're pretty confident that E1b-M81 came over well before the Moors, possibly as long ago as the Neolithic (I'm not familiar with STR dating of this but that's what I've read). So if we're talking about migrations out of pre-R1b Iberia, there's a very good chance that they had a lot of I2a1a, G2a, and E1b-M81... in fact, the spread of E1b-M81 into France is very likely explainable by Beaker Culture. I don't see a similar pattern for E1b-M78 though, so I'm not sure it solves our E1b problem.

Re: the E1b hypothesis: We need to remember that we're talking about two different European E1b clades, E1b-M81 (probably came over from North Africa) and E1b-M78 (probably came over from the Near East). Now we're pretty confident that E1b-M81 came over well before the Moors, possibly as long ago as the Neolithic (I'm not familiar with STR dating of this but that's what I've read). So if we're talking about migrations out of pre-R1b Iberia, there's a very good chance that they had a lot of I2a1a, G2a, and E1b-M81... in fact, the spread of E1b-M81 into France is very likely explainable by Beaker Culture. I don't see a similar pattern for E1b-M78 though, so I'm not sure it solves our E1b problem.

There are much more than two subclades of E1b1b. The more I think about it the less sense it makes that E1b1b expanded from the Near East, mainly because all subclades of E1b1b are found in East Africa, even the so-called European ones like V13. I posted a new hypothesis last month about the possibility that the lush green Paleolithic and Mesolithic Sahara was once inhabited by a great number of E1b1b people, who crossed the Mediterranean in search of more fertile land when the Sahara started to desertify.

- E1b1b1a (E-V68) => found in Sardinia and Africa but not in the Middle East (clearly pointing to a direct migration from North Africa to Sardinia)
- its subclade E1b1b1a1 (E-M78) => found in East Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. E-V13 is one of its numerous subclades and is found all over North Africa as well as in Europe and the Middle East. All the other subclades are mostly East African (V12, V22, V32) or North African (V65), but not Middle Eastern.

- E1b1b1b (E-L19/V257) => the parent haplogroup of E-M81, recently discovered by Trombetta et al. (2011). It is so far found in Kenya, Morocco, Corsica, Sardinia, and Spain, once again showing a direct Africa to Southwest Europe movement. E-M81 itself is found all over the Sahara, as far south as Burkina Faso, and as far east as Sudan.

- E1b1b1c (E-M123) => extremely wide distribution, throughout East Africa, North Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. No clear pattern of distribution so far, but some pockets here and there with higher frequency due to the sparsity of tests.

The lack of clear pattern and the very old age of these haplogroups and their surprising diversity for their age (a sign that they descend from a large Paleolithic population) all agree with a pan-Saharan distribution in the late Paleolithic (from circa 20,000 years ago) until the last desertification of the Sahara roughly 6,000 years ago.

It is a mistake to try to comprehend the world as it was 10,000 or 15,000 years ago by looking at how it is now. Just before the end of the last Ice Age, the world was a totally different place. Northern Europe was uninhabitable, southern Europe was had a climate closer to modern Scandinavia, and North Africa was a vast Eden, teeming with game and fruit trees that could support a very large hunter-gatherer population (certainly more than all Ice-age Europe put together). The Middle East, as far east as Afghanistan and Pakistan, was also much greener than today and filled with big mammals of all kind. That's why most of the late Paleolithic haplogroup diversity was to be found from the Sahara to South Asia, and haplogroups such as R1a and R1b probably arose in such a region too.

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"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?", Winston Churchill.

- E1b1b1a (E-V68) => found in Sardinia and Africa but not in the Middle East (clearly pointing to a direct migration from North Africa to Sardinia)
- its subclade E1b1b1a1 (E-M78) => found in East Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. E-V13 is one of its numerous subclades and is found all over North Africa as well as in Europe and the Middle East. All the other subclades are mostly East African, not Middle Eastern.

I could believe a direct migration across the Mediterranean for this. How likely is it that there was much E1b M81- in Iberia at the time of Beaker Culture, though? Much of the E1b M81- present in Iberia today (and there isn't all that much) probably came from later migrations into it, no? So if we're postulating a major movement of E1b out of Iberia during Beaker Culture time, it seems that it was mainly E1b M81+. I'm curious if you agree with that.

I have an addition regarding that African influence in Iberia and Sardinia: if Maciamo is correct about this, it would perfectly explain what we see with the autosomal DNA data (African admixture) from DODECAD.

Otherwise, I must agree with spongetario that the distribution of E1b, which is basically inverse to the actual occurence of Beaker-Bell sites in France is an argument against Beaker-Bell distributing E1b. On the flip side, if R1b arrived later (which, for all purposes, still cannot be ruled out), it could explain the pattern we do see even if Beaker-Bell carried E1b.

Hmmm, there is that possibility. Given we (still) have no idea as of yet where E1b came from (it's one of those Haplogroups everybody expected to be Neolithic but it clearly isn't), this might be it.

E1b1b wasn't found in Neolithic sites in Europe either because it came later (most common assumption), or because it was already there since the Paleolithic/Mesolithic, alongside haplogroup I. I am increasingly in favour of the second scenario, because I just can't see how E1b1b could have become so widespread in Europe with a post-Bronze Age arrival. We still don't have any Paleolithic or Mesolithic Y-DNA, and the Neolithic archaeological sites were essentially inhabited by the people who brought the Neolithic culture, not by the contemporary indigenous hunter-gatherers. There is so little haplogroup I in Italy in particular that I foresee that E-M78 (with a E-M81 and E-M123 minority) migrated from North Africa to South Italy, then to Greece, then to the Balkans. Iberia was settled by the same haplogroups but with more E-M81. There were probably several waves in both cases.

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"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?", Winston Churchill.